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Re: Value of one-owner 83 320i??? (archive)
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Posted by MPike on November 04, 2000 at 03:05:58:

In Reply to: Value of one-owner 83 320i??? posted by David on November 03, 2000 at 23:57:12:

The car looks very good from here.
Since it was recently repainted, ask the owner if any rust repair was done. Take a flexible refrigerator magnet and put it on the sheet metal everywhere to test from bondo, fiberglass, etc. Take it to a qualified BMW shop for a pre-buyers inspection. A decent inspection could cost $100 or more depending on the extent of the inspection. The cheap inspections check to see if the obvious stuff is working, you could do this yourself. A good inspection will do a full A/C leak test, leak down test, compression test, run all of the electrical test possible, put a sensor in the tail pipe, pull off the front wheels and see if the ball joints, etc. are within spec, and so on. Based on the results of the inspection you could take the results to the seller and have some amunition to renegotiate the price (you could easily get back you $100 that paid for the inspection).

If you pay $3500 for the car, and someone smashes it the next day, you may have a difficult time convincing your insurance company to give you more than the book value.

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